The present invention generally relates to a mechanism and method for centrally administering event processing for various software applications, and more specifically to streamlined event processing for social service entities.
Currently, many event processing systems are implemented as frameworks that operate as rule-based programs running in the background of different applications. Each application or framework establishes its own set of business rules and logics, and manages events that occur within its own work processes. This existing scheme forces a user to administer events that occur throughout different applications in a disparate fashion. The user must check each application separately to determine whether an event needs to be initiated to kick off a work process. Additionally, the user must also repeatedly inspect every application to determine the status of events that have already been initiated and to decide what subsequent steps other systems might need to take in order to complete a work process.
This decentralized event management scheme poses many challenges to the user. First of all, as the number of applications increases, the administrator's task to monitor all events for many clients becomes increasingly difficult. In a situation where events in several different applications need to be processed for one particular client, the administrator must repeatedly initiate each event for every application involved. This unnecessary repetition of event processing initiation creates numerous opportunities for errors.
Secondly, because each application handles its own events, there is no streamlined processing of an event that involves multiple applications. In other words, when a cross-application event kicks-off a work process, after the completion of the first stage of the process in the first application, the administrator must determine that the first step has been completed and then manually initiates a subsequent step in the next application involved in the process to continue the event. This constant monitoring of multiple applications for large volumes of events is extremely time consuming and labor intensive.
Finally, to ensure that a new administrator can competently manage event processing, he/she must be trained to monitor and operate all different software applications that house event management systems. The extra time and efforts spent on personnel training for every application is an inefficient expenditure of what often prove to be limited monetary and human resources.
The present invention creatively overcomes the tremendous challenges of existing prior art systems discussed above. The proposed mechanism is implemented as a system component that is independent from applications. As an interface between an application that raises an event that needs to be processed, a business rule framework (“BRF”) that executes a given set of business rules, and a work flow process that captures the processing of the event, the current invention allows an administrator to centrally manage and process events that occur throughout different applications. It provides user interfaces which display information about events that have already been raised, such as business rules, also known as event subscriptions, and work process information, about every event in every application in the network. It also provides an error log for event processing so that the administrator can easily discern which event has encountered an operational problem and what type of error has occurred. The invention recognizes the need to execute some business rules ahead of others, and therefore, enables business rules with different priorities to be processed asynchronously. Lastly, the invention captures a context for each event, so that the system retains information about underlying real life circumstances for each event.
The proposed system is especially applicable to social service entities as an effective benefits claims management tool, where a benefit claim is processed as an event. Many local and national government agencies handle millions of claim submissions and benefits calculations every year. The notion that government agency clerks must manually process each and every benefit claim submitted is untenable. More and more local and national governments are beginning to take advantage of modern technical capabilities to enable fast and efficient solutions for local citizens.
A centralized and streamlined event management system for processing benefits claims is urgently needed in the rapidly growing area of e-Government. For one, government agencies commonly administer many different types of benefits, which may require running multiple software applications. It is also often the case that citizens change their beneficiary status based on real life events. For example, an elderly war veteran citizen with low-income is moving to a new location. This individual, who has been receiving social benefits such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and veterans benefits, need to inform the current local municipality that his benefits from that location should be stopped, and that the municipality at the new location to where he is moving should be providing his social benefits. It may also be the case that a woman, who has been on pregnancy leave and recently delivered a baby, need to change her beneficiary status from pregnancy leave to maternity leave, and receive appropriate social benefits based on her new status. The present invention would automatically apply the latest regulatory rules according to changes in real life events and allow a system administrator at a government agency to process benefits claims quickly, saving much needed efficiency in personnel training.